The Latest Health Tech Gadgets

Over the past few months, the tech world has been buzzing with the rumor that Apple is developing a wearable health-monitoring device. But for now, at least, the tech giant is keeping its plans under wraps. In the meantime, plenty of other companies have come out with innovative health aps and tools. Here's a sampling of some of the more inventive ones.

Smart pills

Digestible pills created by Proteus Digital Health use tiny sensors to monitor a person's health from inside his or her body. Once the sensor reaches the stomach, it communicates with an external patch worn by the patient. The patch then sends information to a synced device, including heart rate, body temperature, physical activity and rest patterns.

Smart bottle

Have you ever picked your baby up from daycare and wondered how much they ate? This device can help. Sleevely raised $85,000 in a Kickstarter campaign to bring the baby nutrition device to market. It wraps around most baby bottles and uses sensors to measure the volume and temperature of formula. The data is then sent to the parent’s mobile device in real time.

Smart contacts

Earlier this year, Google announced it was joining the fight against diabetes by helping patients manage their changing glucose levels with smart contact lenses. Using miniaturized technology, the lenses would measure glucose levels through tears, using a wireless chip and sensor embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material. It would generate one reading per second.

Smart microscope

Another Kickstarter campaign funded Micro Phone Lens, a soft lens that attaches to your phone’s camera and can zoom in to 15X magnification in high focus. Creator Thomas Larson says the lens is a warmup for the 150X microscope, which has potential to change health care in the developing world by providing a cheap, available microscope that can transmit images.

Smart tooth

Researchers in Taipei have designed a wearable artificial tooth that contains an acceleromenter which can detect and report mouth movement associated with talking, chewing, smoking, drinking, and coughing. The smart tooth is about 94 percent accurate at determining unhealthy eating habits. Because our mouth is the window to overall health, the technology could lead to advances in health diagnostics.

Smart helmet

A helmet created by Danish scientists delivers weak electric pulses to the brain and can dramatically improve symptoms of depression. The electrical pulses stimulate new blood vessel growth similar to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), but much less intense. The portable device was used at home by 65 depression patients and two thirds of them saw significant improvement.